


Fall headfirst like paper planes in playground games

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Kidfic, prompted from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 07:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh suffers from Couvade Syndrome, which is a hypothesised disorder where men mirror the pregnancy symptoms of their partner. And Mako... well, she's the partner in this situation. Written from a post by tumblr user ferrific.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall headfirst like paper planes in playground games

Right in the middle of a meeting with a bunch of military brass from the US and China, Raleigh starts to feel really, really sick.

He’s become Herc’s aide-de-camp since the restructuring of PPDC II (and no, they really couldn’t think of anything more creative than that to call the second incarnation of the force, now tasked with defending the earth from threats alien and human in origin) and now, he spends a lot of time in meetings with high-level military officials from around the Pacific Rim. Oh, and he gets a lot of coffee. And walks that stupid bulldog. There’s really never a dull moment.

Anyways, he suddenly has a strong desire to ralph his lunch all over a five star American general, which he suspects would cause some kind of international incident, so he kind of leans over the table and starts breathing very deeply. Herc starts shooting him concerned looks, and after five minutes of kind-of-but-not-really dry heaving, he reaches over and taps him on the shoulder.

“Ranger Becket,” he says, “do you need to be excused?”

Raleigh nods, because he’s afraid of what’s going to come out of his mouth if he opens it, and walks out of the room quickly. As soon as he’s clear of the doorway, he dashes down the hallway to the nearest bathroom and pukes his guts out.

Raleigh figures that Herc will probably give him the rest of the day off just so that he can ensure the US military’s ongoing support of PPDC II, so he wanders back to his room – well, strictly, his and Mako’s room. There’s only one room meant for two in the residential part of the HK Shatterdome. It was once occupied by the Kaidonovskys, and after the end of the war, the spark between him and Mako that started in the Drift grew and grew, and then all of a sudden it made no practical sense for them to occupy two single rooms because Raleigh was never in his any more, and sleeping together doesn’t really work in a single bed. So, they took over the Kaidonovsky’s old room. Then, a new residential services manager appeared at their door one day and informed them that unless they could produce evidence that they were married, they would be placed back in single rooms.

It took the two of them twenty minutes to decide that yes, the whole getting married thing would be totally fine, and then they got to have a nice day in Hong Kong visiting the registrar’s office and finding rings that weren’t totally cheesy.  The residual mind meld left over from the Drift is sometimes a bit annoying, but they work with it, and it helps to instinctively know when Mako needs a little bit of TLC and when he should just back the hell off, and she knows that with him as well. They work together, and now they’ve put a ring on it, and not killed each other or wanted to in the past six months, and that’s that.

He’s a little surprised to find Mako curled up in bed when he gets there, and based on the opportunely positioned wastebasket he’s guessing that she’s curled up in bed for much the same reason that he’s about to be.

“You feeling okay?” he asks.

“I’m going to blame it on the meatloaf,” Mako says.

“So no.”

“Nope.”

“Do you want Saltine crackers? Gingerale?” he asks. “Can I get you anything?”

She rolls over and smiles at him incredulously. “You are just as sick as I am, and yet you’re trying to help me.”

 _It’s what you do when you love someone,_ he thinks, and since they have a nearly eighteen-month long Drift hangover, he knows she hears it. (The smile that she flashes him is a pretty dead giveaway as well.)

“I’m okay,” she says. “I don’t want to try and eat anything now.”

“I’d kiss you or something, but I have graveyard mouth.” He lies down beside her. “You’re going to have to settle for a cuddle.”

“I can handle that,” she says, and he spoons against her and slings one arm over her waist.

* * *

He’s feeling better in the morning, as is she. Fortunately, he stays better throughout the day, and she doesn’t. He gets a text message from Emma in Personnel telling him that he should probably get down there because Mako is sick and Emma being the busybody that she is, she just couldn’t resist calling him down there to help Mako up to their room. Raleigh and Mako try their absolute best to keep their relationship on the down low when they’re at work (i.e. when they aren’t behind closed doors, though this is sometimes a little bit futile because they enjoy the littlest bit of teasing each other, which sometimes escalates and results in Herc giving them looks of death).

So, they walk down the hallway with Raleigh’s arm around Mako’s shoulders and his other arm bracing against her chest, and suddenly he gets a whiff of something and he starts to feel nauseous as well.

(It’s kind of a shame that they don’t have a bathroom attached to their room.) 

* * *

Raleigh’s illness is manageable, whatever’s going on, and he finds that a little bit of Gravol tends to make it better. Mako doesn’t get better, unfortunately, and four days of no food staying down, he literally carries her to the sick bay.

“Raleigh… stop…” she says with a groan.

“No, Mako,” he whispers through gritted teeth, “I don’t care what cred you’re going to lose, you tried to go to the bathroom and passed out. Sick bay.”

She closes her eyes and groans again. She’s fighting against his worry, and he gets it, but this is one of those moments where he’s going to ignore that and continue to worry because he strongly senses that his worry is justified.

It turns out that it is – they stick an IV in to her the minute she got there, and presumably it’s full of some kind of food stuff because she both perks up after a little while. They take some blood, and politely leave so that Mako can get some sleep for the first time in a little while. Raleigh kisses her on the forehead, and then steals a pillow from another bed and somehow, _somehow_ makes the chair comfortable enough to sleep in.

Herc brings some things by for him to review in the morning, and another one of Mako’s Personnel minions brings a couple of files down for her.

“Oh,” she says quietly, sitting up in bed. “Are these the new ones that have come from the Sakhalin Academy?”

Minion nods. “Yeah, the ones that didn’t end up choosing Russia as their home base. I think we’ve got some good ones here. Drift compatible, as the saying goes.”

“Thanks,” Mako says. “I’ll look them over.”

Minion disappears, and Raleigh looks over at her. “Do you need to do that now?”

“It’s a stomach bug, Raleigh,” she says. “It won’t stop me.”

“It’s not like the apocalypse is imminent any more, Mako –“

She gives him this look, and he sort of instinctively understands: _but we know how imminent the apocalypse can get and thus, I will review my files._

He shuts up and looks over the briefings that Herc brought him, even though he’s not really paying attention and is just making sure that Mako doesn’t suddenly faint again.

* * *

It’s not just a stomach bug. Of course it’s not just a stomach bug.

“Hyperemesis gravidarium,” the doctor says.

“Which is…” Raleigh asks, but Mako’s got this look of sheer terror and joy on her face that tells him that she already knows what the doctor is telling her.

“Severe morning sickness,” Mako says, looking dead ahead.

“But you would only get morning sickness if you were…” Raleigh starts, and then all those little wheels in his mind click in a thundering _oh._

“Congratulations, you two,” the doctor says with a smile. “You’re about ten weeks along, Ms. Mori. We don’t have an OB/GYN on staff here, but I can refer you to one in Hong Kong where you can go for all of your checkups.” The doctor smiles. “I’ll get someone to send you the details, and I’ll leave you two to talk.” She walks out the door.

Raleigh looks over at Mako, and he kind of wonders how this didn’t end up getting caught in all the Drift hangover stuff, but he’s also kind of thinking about _holy shit I’m going to be a dad is Mako going to get blasted by radiation with all this Mark VI stuff oh god does she want to do this because if she doesn’t want to do this then we’ve got to figure something else out,_ and then Mako reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you okay with this?”

He’s a little shell-shocked, sure, but if there is one thing for sure, he’s okay with this because there was always this little bit of him that wondered if they would leave PPDC and do normal things that other people do like start families and stop living on a military base. Normal is not their MO, though.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m scared, and we’re going to do a lot of figuring things out in the next few months, but I’m in if you’re in, Mako.”

“I’m in.” She nods, and then wipes tears from her eyes.

(They’re both rather adept at cuddling in single beds, so he slips on to her hospital bed and just holds her until they both fall asleep.)

* * *

“Raleigh,” she says, one night a week later when he hasn’t been able to sleep at all because he knows he’s hungry for something but he can’t figure out what, “this is weird, but I really need some vanilla ice cream.”

That is precisely what he’s hungry for. Vanilla ice cream.

“Mako,” he says, rolling over in bed, “I thought you hated vanilla ice cream.” Or, at least she has every time that he’s tried to eat it with her in the past few months.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But right now, I am dreaming about vanilla ice cream.”

He can’t deny her (or their unborn child) anything, so he possibly uses the spare set of keys for Herc’s fancy company car that he has to drive in to Hong Kong, and picks up a pint of something that he’s pretty sure is ice cream.

They sit up and talk and eat the entire pint between the two of them while the sun rises over Victoria Harbour. 

* * *

Nothing is easy with them. Like, this is the wonderful part of not easy, but still. Nothing is easy.

Raleigh is no expert at reading ultrasound scans, but he’s pretty sure that the thing on the screen is not just one baby.

Fucking identical twins. He’s almost shaky with joy, and Mako starts crying. So does he.

(He’s been crying at everything lately.) 

* * *

The first time the babies kick, it wakes them both up.

* * *

“Listen,” Herc says, after he’s finally managed to tear the two of them away from work and get them together in to his office, which with Mako is especially hard, because she is fleet on her feet even though there’s no doubt what the bump on her stomach signifies, “the Shatterdome, for all of its merits, is no place to raise a child.” He sighs, takes a sip of his glass of water, and then continues. “God knows I learned that the hard way. PPDC is prepared to take the stress of navigating the Hong Kong real estate market away, because you two probably have enough to worry about with the two little ones on the way. There are a couple of apartments that we own in Mid Levels which you two, soon to be four, can live in.”

Mako lets out a sigh of relief. Raleigh knows that when she can’t sleep, she’s been looking at pictures of apartments and fretting over the high value of trying to do anything in Hong Kong.

“Thank you,” she says. She reaches out for a handshake, because with her baby bump, it’s quite hard for her to bow.

“Next weekend, you guys can move in there,” Herc says, accepting the handshake. “I’m sure you can rally a few people to help you guys out. I’ll give Tendo the weekend off, and if you’re nice to Newton, the boy has more upper body strength than you would give him credit for.”

* * *

Mako starts having vivid dreams at the beginning of month six, and Raleigh actually suspects that they’re nightmares because she will wake up all shaken up, and won’t tell him what in god’s name is going on. (Her screaming in her sleep frightens him.)

And then one night, he’s there having a dream too, where a Kaiju is looming over a city he knows from Mako’s memories to be Tokyo, and there are two little girls in blue coats with red shoes with curly hair and their mother’s cute nose standing there, facing down the monster. Except there’s no Jaeger coming to their rescue, and he wakes up in a cold sweat when it swoops down towards them.

“Raleigh,” Mako says quietly, “you were screaming.”

“Bad dream,” he says, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with shaky hands, and she starts tracing the circuit lines burned on to his skin with her fingertips.

“Was it in Tokyo? Two little girls?”

He nods.

“That was Onibaba,” she whispers.

Right. He recognised the Kaiju from somewhere, but also sort of knew that it wasn’t one of the ones that he’d ever see up close.

“They’re not coming back,” she whispers, and there’s the slightest bit of a question mark at the end of her sentence.

“No,” he says, but he’s not so sure of how everything works either. “No, hopefully not.

He falls back asleep with one hand rested protectively on the bump on her stomach.

* * *

It’s literally only when they’re crying in front of _Up_ (Raleigh is a secret Pixar fan) in their new apartment after all their PPDC-supplied moving helpers (read: Tendo, Newton, Hermann’s wife and Hermann, who was the least helpful person to have, and a ton of Personnel Minions) are gone that he realises that he’s been mirroring the pregnancy symptoms for the past seven, nearly eight months. The nausea, the heartburn, the sudden and sharp distaste for the smell of coffee, the weird-ass cravings, the vivid dreams, the weight gain  – all part of pregnancy. This is not something that, by sheer virtue of his not having a uterus, he should logically avoid.

And yet.

“Well,” Newton says, sitting in their living room drinking green tea with Hermann, “I have been doing some research on post-Drift attachment between pilots, and I think I know what’s been happening: Couvade Syndrome.”

“Now, Newton,” Hermann snaps, in one of his characteristic angry outbursts, “you know there’s nothing that proves that actually exi-“

Newton literally clamps a hand over Hermann’s mouth, and Hermann’s eyes briefly flash with rage.

“My colleague is right,” he says, “there is nothing but a lot of anecdotal evidence as far as Couvade Syndrome is concerned. However, based on the strength of your neural connection, and the amount that you two still share even when you haven’t drifted in almost two years, it would stand to reason that you two might share some pregnancy symptoms, which is pretty much Couvade Syndrome. I mean, it’s not like we have a ton of evidence to go on here. That would seem to be the logical explanation.”

He removes his hand from Hermann’s mouth.

“Tell me,” Hermann says, leaning towards Mako and Raleigh, “do you hear them? In the connection between the two of you?”

“Sometimes,” Mako replies, and she’s right – he can sometimes pick up two little voices in the neural dialogue that sometimes beams between him and Mako. He draws little circles on her shoulder with the hand that rests on it.

After they leave, he washes dishes while she sits in a chair by the sink and watches him.

“I’m scared,” she says, looking down.

“Me too,” he replies. “It’s not – it’s not going to be easy. I mean, we took on giant aliens from another dimension in a hundred ton piece of metal with panache, and now it’s two little babies and I have no idea what to do.” He continues scrubbing the sugar off the bottom of Hermann’s mug.

“They’re little girls,” Mako says. “Like –“

“Like the ones in the dream with Onibaba?”

“I have had other ones,” she says. “Happy ones. No Kaiju. Just, the four of us.”

“Me too,” he says. “I think.”

“Dreaming it together,” she replies, and then says nothing for a little while.

Once he’s done with the dishes, he kneels down in front of her, and kisses her on the lips softly, and then kisses her ever-expanding bump.

“Nearly there,” he says.

She groans and rolls her eyes. “I can’t wait to be done with… this. I think you have the easy part of the equation, Raleigh.”

“I do,” he says with a smile. “Now, what do the cravings say for us to eat tonight?”

* * *

In some sort of grand flash of luck, he puts the finishing touches on the babies’ room about 12 hours before Mako starts going in to labour. It was silly of him to leave it so long – and yes, with paint fumes and crib assembly and whatnot, he’d tried his best to direct Mako to other nesting-related activities, because he would finish these rooms himself no matter what, because he owed it to those two little beings inside of the most important person in his life – because the OB/GYN had warned them, and warned them several times, that twins are typically born short of the usual forty weeks of pregnancy.

Anyways, he’s lying on the couch, congratulating himself on finally getting the second crib together when he hears a shriek and a glass shatter in the kitchen. He’s on his feet in a nanosecond, and finds Mako there, a hand on her stomach and shock in her eyes.

“Raleigh,” she says, “it’s happening.”

“Okay,” he says, and his mind spins. She is serene as ever as he dashes around, trying to find their hospital bag and put his shoes on the right foot. She stands by the front door and laughs.

As they drive to the hospital, he quietly thanks himself that the Couvade or whatever does not extend to this part of the pregnancy.

(He’ll still be right with her the whole time.)


End file.
